SERMON 

OF 


THE  DANGEROUS  CLASSES  IN  SOCIETY, 


•$reac|)etr  at  tl;e  ^ftelotuon,  on  Suntran,  Jan.  31, 


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PARKER, 


MIXISIEP.  OF  THE  XXY1II.  CONQREOAXIONAL  CHtJRCn  IX  B03I0X, 


AND  NOW  PUBLISHED  BT  BEQUEST. 


BOSTON: 

PUBLISHED  BY  C.  &  J.  M.  SPEAR,  40  CORNHILL, 

AND  B.  H.  GREENE,  124  WASHINGTON  STREET. 

1  8  4  7. 


/ 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1847,  by 
THEODORE  PARKER, 

In  the  Clerk’s  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


FRESS  OF  COOLIDGE  AND  WILEY, 
WATER  STREET. 


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SERMON. 


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1 


IF  A  MAN  HAVE  AN  HUNDRED  SHEEP,  AND  ONE  OF  THEM  BE  GONE  ASTRAY, 
DOTH  HE  NOT  LEAVE  THE  NINETY  AND  NINE,  AND  GOETH  INTO  THE  MOUN¬ 
TAINS,  AND  SEEKETH  THAT  WHICH  IS  GONE  ASTRAY  ?  —  Matt,  xviii  :  12. 


We  are  first  Babies,  then  Children,  then  Youths, 
then  Men.  It  is  so  with  the  Nation ;  so  with  Man¬ 
kind.  The  Human  Race  started  with  no  culture, 
no  religion,  no  morals,  even  no  manners,  —  having 
only  desires  and  faculties  within,  and  the  world 
without.  Now  we  have  attained  much  more.  But 
it  has  taken  many  centuries  for  Mankind  to  pass 
from  primeval  barbarism  to  the  present  stage  of 
comfort,  Science,  civilization,  and  refinement.  It 
has  been  the  work  of  two  hundred  generations ; 
perhaps  of  more.  But  each  new  child  is  born  at 
the  foot  of  the  ladder,  as  much  as  the  first  child ; 
with  only  desires  and  faculties.  He  may  have  a 
better  physical  organization  than  the  first  child ; 
he  certainly  has  better  teachers,  —  but  he,  in  like 
manner,  is  born  with  no  culture,  no  religion,  no 
morals,  even  with  no  manners ;  born  into  them, 
not  with  them;  born  bare  of  these  things  and 
naked  as  the  first  child.  He  must  himself  toil  up 
the  ladder  which  Mankind  have  been  so  long  in 
constructing  and  climbing  up.  To  attain  the  pres¬ 
ent  civilization  he  must  pass  over  every  point 


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4 


which  the  Race  passed  through.  The  child  of  the 
civilized  man,  born  with  a  good  organization  and 
under  favorable  circumstances,  can  do  this  rapidly, 
and  in  thirty  or  forty  years  attains  the  height  of 
development  which  it  took  the  whole  Human 
Race  sixty  centuries  or  more  to  arrive  at.  He  has 
the  aid  of  past  experience  and  the  examples  of 
noble  men ;  he  travels  a  road  already  smooth  and 
beaten.  The  world’s  cultivation,  so  slowly  and 
painfully  achieved,  helps  civilize  him.  He  may 
then  go  further  on,  and  cultivate  himself;  may 
transcend  the  development  of  Mankind,  adding 
new  rounds  to  the  ladder.  So  doing  he  aids  future 
children  who  will  one  day  climb  above  his  head, 
he  possibly  crying  against  them,  —  that  they  climb 
only  to  fall  and  thereby  sweep  off  him  and  all  be¬ 
low  ;  that  no  new  rounds  can  be  added  to  the  old 
ladder. 

Still,  after  all  the  helps  which  our  fathers  have 
provided,  every  future  child  must  go  through  the 
same  points  which  we  and  our  predecessors  passed 
through,  only  more  swiftly.  Every  Boy  has  his 
Animal  period,  when  he  can  only  eat  and  sleep, 
intelligence  slowly  dawning  on  his  heart.  Then 
comes  his  Savage  period,  when  he  knows  nothing 
of  Rights,  when  all  thine  is  mine  to  him  if  he  can 
get  it.  Then  comes  his  Barbarous  period,  he  is 
ignorant  and  dislikes  to  learn,  study  and  restraint 
are  irksome.  He  hates  the  School,  disobeys  his 
mother;  has  reverence  for  nobody.  Nothing  is 
sacred  to  him  —  no  time,  nor  place,  nor  person. 
He  would  grow  up  wild.  The  greater  part  of  chil¬ 
dren  travel  beyond  this  stage.  The  unbearable 
Boy  becomes  a  tolerable  Youth ;  then  a  powerful 


5 


Man.  He  loves  his  duty ;  outstrips  the  men  that 
once  led  him  so  unwilling  and  reluctant,  and  will 
set  hard  lessons  for  his  grandsire  which  that  grand- 
sire,  perhaps,  will  not  learn.  The  young  learns 
of  the  old,  mounts  the  ladder  they  mounted  and 
the  ladder  they  made.  The  reverse  is  seldom  true, 
that  the  old  climbs  the  ladder  which  the  young 
have  made  and  over  that  storms  new  heights.  Now 
and  then  you  see  it,  but  such  are  extraordinary  and 
marvellous  men.  In  the  old  story  Saturn  did  not 
take  pains  to  understand  his  children,  nor  learn 
thereof ;  he  only  devoured  them  up,  till  they  out¬ 
grew  and  overmastered  him.  Did  the  generation 
that  is  passing  from  the  stage  ever  comprehend 
and  fairly  judge  the  new  generation  coming  on  ? 
In  the  world  the  Barbarian  passes  on  and  becomes 
the  Civilized,  then  the  Enlightened. 

Now  in  the  physical  process  of  growth  from  the 
Baby  to  the  Man  there  is  no  direct  intervention  of 
the  Will.  Therefore  the  process  goes  on  regularly, 
and  we  do  not  see  abortive  men  who  have  ad¬ 
vanced  in  years  but  stopped  growth  in  their  baby¬ 
hood,  or  boyhood.  But  as  the  Will  is  the  Soul  of 
Personality,  so  to  say,  the  Heart  of  Intellect,  Morals 
and  Religion,  so  the  force  thereof  may  promote,  re¬ 
tard,  disturb  and  perhaps  for  a  time  completely  ar¬ 
rest  the  progress  of  intellectual,  moral  and  religious 
growth.  Still  more,  this  spiritual  development  of 
men  is  hindered  or  promoted  by  subtle  causes 
hitherto  little  appreciated.  Hence  by  reason  of 
these  outward  or  internal  hindrances  you  find 
persons  and  classes  of  men  who  do  not  attain  the 
average  culture  of  Mankind,  but  stop  at  some 
lower  stage  of  this  spiritual  development,  or  else 


6 


loiter  behind  the  rest  You  even  find  whole  na¬ 
tions  whose  progress  is  so  slow  that  they  need  the 
continual  aid  of  the  more  civilized  to  quicken  their 
growth.  Outward  circumstances  have  a  powerful 
influence  on  this  development.  If  a  single  class 
in  a  nation  lingers  behind  the  rest,  the  cause  there¬ 
of  will  commonly  be  found  in  some  outward  hin¬ 
drance.  They  move  in  a  resisting  medium  and 
therefore  with  abated  speed.  No  one  expects  the 
same  progress  from  a  Russian  serf  and  a  free  man 
of  New  England.  I  do  not  deny  that  in  the  case 
of  some  men  personal  will  is  doubtless  the  disturb¬ 
ing  force.  I  am  not  now  to  go  beyond  that  fact, 
and  inquire  how  the  will  became  as  it  is.  Here  is 
a  man  who,  from  whatever  cause,  is  bodily  ill-born, 
with  defective  organs.  He  stops  in  the  Animal 
period;  is  incapable  of  any  considerable  degree 
of  development,  intellectual,  moral,  or  religious. 
The  defect  is  in  his  body.  Others  disturbed  by  more 
occult  causes  do  not  attain  their  proper  growth. 
This  man  wishes  to  stop  in  his  Savage  period,  he 
would  be  a  Freebooter,  a  Privateer  against  society, 
having  universal  letters  of  Marque  and  Reprisal  — 
a  perpetual  Arab,  his  rule  is  to  get  what  he  can,  as 
he  will  and  where  he  pleases;  to  keep  what  he 
gets.  Another  stops  at  the  Barbarous  age.  He  is 
lazy  and  will  not  work,  others  must  bear  his  share 
of  the  general  burthen  of  Mankind.  He  claims 
letters  patent  to  make  all  men  serve  him.  He  is 
not  only  indolent,  constitutionally  lazy,  but  lazy 
consciously  and  wilfully  idle.  He  will  not  work, 
but  in  one  form  or  another  will  beg  or  steal.  Yet  a 
fourth  stops  in  the  Half-civilized  period.  He  will 
work  with  his  hands  but  no  more.  He  cannot  dis- 


7 


cover ;  he  will  not  study  to  learn ;  he  will  not  even 
be  taught  what  has  been  invented  and  taught  be¬ 
fore.  None  can  teach  him.  The  horse  is  led  to 
the  water,  or  the  water  brought  to  the  horse,  but 
the  beast  will  not  drink.  “  The  idle  Fool  is  whipt 
at  school,”  but  to  no  purpose.  He  is  always  an 
oaf.  No  college  or  tutor  mends  him.  The  wild 
ass  will  go  out  free ;  wild  and  an  ass. 

These  four,  the  Idiot,  the  Pirate,  the  Thief,  and 
the  Clown  —  are  exceptional  men.  They  remain 
stationary.  Meanwhile,  Mankind  advances,  con¬ 
tinually,  but  not  with  an  even  front.  The  Human 
Race  moves  not  by  column  or  line,  but  by  tchelon 
as  it  were.  We  go  up  by  stairs,  not  by  slopes. 
Now  comes  a  great  man,  of  far-reaching  and  pro¬ 
spective  sight,  a  Moses,  and  he  tells  men  that  there 
is  a  Land  of  Promise,  which  they  have  a  right  to 
who  have  skill  to  win  it.  Then  lesser  men,  the 
Calebs  and  Joshuas,  go  and  search  it  out,  bringing 
back  therefrom  new  wine  in  the  cluster  and  allur¬ 
ing  tales.  Then  troops  of  Pioneers  advance  —  yet 
lesser  men ;  then  a  few  bold  men  who  love  ad¬ 
venture.  Then  comes  the  Army,  the  People  with 
their  flocks  and  herds,  the  Priesthood  with  their  Ark 
of  the  Covenant  and  the  Tabernacle,  the  title-deeds 
of  the  new  lands  which  they  have  heard  of  but  not 
seen.  At  last  there  comes  the  Mixed  Multitude, 
following  in  no  order,  but  not  without  shouting 
and  tumult,  men  treading  one  another  under  foot, 
cowards  looking  back  and  refusing  to  march,  old 
men  dying  without  seeing  their  consolation.  If 
you  will  he  down  on  the  ground  and  take  the  pro¬ 
file  of  a  great  cityr  and  see  how  Hill,  Steeple, 
Dome,  Tower,  the  Roof  of  the  tall  house  gain  on 


8 


the  sky,  and  then  come  whole  streets  of  ware¬ 
houses  and  shops,  then  common  dwellings,  then 
cheap,  low,  tenements  —  you  will  have  a  good 
profile  of  Man’s  march  to  gain  new  conquests  in 
Science,  Art,  Morals,  Religion,  and  general  devel¬ 
opment.  It  is  so  in  the  Family,  — -  a  bright  boy 
shooting  before  all  the  rest,  and  taking  the  thunder 
out  of  the  adverse  cloud  for  his  brothers  and  sis¬ 
ters,  who  follow  and  grow  rich  with  unscathed 
forehead.  It  is  so  in  the  Nation,  —  a  few  great 
men  bearing  the  brunt  of  the  storm,  and  wading 
through  the  surges  to  set  their  weaker  brothers, 
screaming  and  struggling,  with  dry  feet,  in  safety, 
on  the  firm  land  of  Science  or  Religion.  It  is  so 
in  the  World,  —  a  tall  nation  achieving  Art,  Sci¬ 
ence,  Law,  Morals,  Religion,  and  by  the  fact  re¬ 
vealing  their  beauty  to  the  barbarian  race. 

In  all  departments  of  human  concern  there  are 
such  Pioneers  for  the  Family,  the  Nation,  or  Man¬ 
kind.  It  is  instructive  to  study  this  law  of  human 
progress  —  to  see  the  De  Gamas  and  Columbuses, 
aspiring  men  who  dream  of  worlds  to  come,  and 
lead  the  perilous  van ;  to  see  the  Vespuccis,  the 
Cortes,  the  Pizarros  who  get  rank  and  fame  by 
following  in  their  track ;  to  see  next  the  merchant 
adventurers,  soldiers,  suttlers  and  the  like  who 
make  money  out  of  the  new  conquest,  while  the 
great  Discoverers  had  for  meet  reward  the  joy  of 
their  genius,  the  nobleness  of  their  work,  a  sight 
of  the  world’s  future  welfare  from  the  Prophet’s 
mountain  —  a  hard  life,  a  bad  name,  and  a  grave 
unknown. 

Now  while  there  are  those-  men  in  the  van  of 
society,  who  aspire  at  more,  chiding  and  taxing 


9 


Mankind  with  idleness,  cowardice,  and  even  sin, 

—  there  are  yet  those  others  who  loiter  on  the  way, 
from  weakness  or  wilfulness,  refusing  to  advance 

—  idlers,  cowards,  sinners.  If  born  in  the  rear 
afar  from  civilization  they  are  left  to  die  —  the 
Savages,  the  Inferior  Races,  the  Perishing  Class¬ 
es  of  the  world.  If  born  in  the  centre  of  civiliza¬ 
tion,  for  a  while  they  impede  the  march  by  actively 
hindering  others,  by  standing  in  their  way,  or  by 
plundering  the  rest  —  the  Dangerous  Classes  of 
society.  They  too  are  slain  and  trodden  under  foot 
of  men  and  likewise  perish. 

In  most  large  Families  there  is  a  Bad  Boy,  a  black 
sheep  in  the  flock,  an  Ishmael  whom  Abraham 
will  drive  out  into  the  wilderness,  to  meet  an  angel 
if  he  can  find  one.  That  story  of  Hagar  and  her 
son  is  very  old,  but  verified  anew  each  year  in 
families  and  nations.  So  in  Society  there  are 
Criminals  who  do  not  keep  up  with  the  moral 
advance  of  the  mass,  stragglers  from  the  march, 
whom  Society  treats  as  Abraham  his  base-born 
boy  —  but  sending  them  off  with  no  loaf  nor  skin 
of  water,  not  even  a  blessing  but  a  curse ;  sending 
them  off  as  Cain  went  —  with  a  bad  name  and  a 
mark  on  their  foreheads  !  So  in  the  World  there 
are  Inferior  Nations,  savage,  barbarous,  lialf-civiliz- 
ed;  some  are  inferior  in  nature,  some  perhaps  only 
behind  us  in  development ;  on  a  lower  form  in  the 
great  school  of  Providence  —  Negroes,  Indians, 
Mexicans,  Irish,  and  the  like,  whom  the  world  treats 
as  Ishmael  and  the  Gibeonites  got  treated :  now 
their  land  is  stolen  from  them  in  war ;  their  chil¬ 
dren,  or  their  persons,  are  annexed  to  the  Strong 
as  Slaves.  The  Civilized  continually  preys  on  the 


10 


Savage,  re-annexing  their  territory  and  stealing 
their  persons  —  owning  them  or  claiming  their 
work.  Esau  is  rough  and  hungry,  Jacob  smooth 
and  well  fed.  The  smooth  man  overreaches  the 
rough ;  buys  his  birthright  for  a  mess  of  pottage  ; 
takes  the  ground  from  underneath  his  feet,  thereby 
supplanting  his  brother.  So  the  elder  serves  the 
younger,  and  the  fresh  civilization,  strong  and 
sometimes  it  may  be  wicked  also,  overmasters  the 
ruder  age  that  is  contented  to  stop.  The  young 
man  now  a  Barbarian  will  come  up  one  day  and 
take  all  our  places,  making  us  seem  ridiculous, 
nothing  but  timid  conservatives ! 

Now  all  these  three,  the  reputed  Pests  of  the 
Family,  Society,  and  the  World  are  but  loiterers 
from  the  march,  bad  boys,  or  dull  ones.  Criminals 
are  a  class  of  such ;  savages  are  nations  thereof — - 
classes  or  nations  that  for  some  cause  do  not  keep 
up  with  the  movement  of  Mankind.  The  same 
human  nature  is  in  us  all,  only  there  it  is  not  so 
highly  developed.  Yet  the  bad  boy,  who  to-day  is 
a  curse  to  the  mother  that  bore  him,  would  perhaps 
have  been  accounted  brave  and  good  in  the  days 
of  the  Conqueror ;  the  dangerous  class  might  have 
fought  in  the  Crusades  and  been  reckoned  soldiers 
of  the  Lord  whose  chance  for  Heaven  was  most 
auspicious.  The  savage  nations  would  have  been 
thought  civilized  in  the  days  when  “there  was 
no  smith  in  Israel.”  David  would  make  a  sorry 
figure  among  the  present  kings  of  Europe,  and 
Abraham  would  be  judged  of  by  a  standard  not 
known  in  his  time.  There  have  been  many  centu¬ 
ries  in  which  the  Pirate,  the  Land-Robber  and  the 
Murderer  were  thought  the  greatest  of  men. 


11 


Now  it  becomes  a  serious  question  what  shall  be 
done  for  these  Stragglers,  or  even  with  them.  It  is 
sometimes  a  terrible  question  to  the  Father  and 
Mother  what  they  shall  do  for  their  reprobate  Son 
who  is  an  offence  to  the  neighborhood,  a  shame,  a 
reproach  and  a  heart-burning  to  them.  It  is  a  sad 
question  to  Society,  What  shall  be  done  with  the 
criminals  —  Thieves,  Housebreakers,  Pirates,  Mur¬ 
derers.  It  is  a  serious  question  to  the  World,  What 
is  to  become  of  the  humbler  nations  —  Irish,  Mex¬ 
icans,  Malays,  Indians,  Negroes. 

In  the  World  and  in  Society  the  question  is 
answered  in  about  the  same  way.  In  a  low  civi¬ 
lization,  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  is  the 
strongest  of  all.  They  are  done  with,  not  for  ;  are 
done  away  with.  It  is  the  Old  Testament  an¬ 
swer  :  —  the  Inferior  Nation  is  hewn  to  pieces,  the 
Strong  possess  their  lands,  their  cities,  their  cattle, 
their  persons,  also,  if  they  will ;  the  class  of  Crimi¬ 
nals  gets  the  Prophet’s  curse  —  the  two  Bears,  the 
Jail  and  the  Gallows,  eat  them  up.  In  the  Fami¬ 
ly  alone  is  the  Christian  answer  given ;  the  good 
shepherd  goes  forth  to  seek  the  one  sheep  that  has 
strayed  and  gone  lost  upon  the  mountains ;  the 
Father  goes  out  after  the  poor  prodigal,  whom  the 
swine’s  meat  could  not  feed  nor  fill.*  The  World, 
which  is  the  Society  of  Nations,  and  Society, 
which  is  the  Family  of  Classes,  still  belong  mainly 
to  the  “  old  dispensation,”  Heathen  or  Hebrew, 
the  Period  of  Force.  In  the  Family  there  is  a 
certain  instinctive  love  binding  the  Parent  to  the 

*  The  allusion  is  to  the  following  passages  of  Scripture,  which 
were  read  as  the  lesson  for  the  day:  — Numb.,  xiv. ;  II.  Kings,  ii : 
23  —  25  5  and  Luke,  xv. 


12 


Child,  and  therefore  a  certain  Unity  of  Action- 
growing  out  of  that  love.  So  the  Father  feels  his 
kinship  to  his  boy,  though  a  reprobate,  looks  for 
the  causes  of  his  son’s  folly  or  sin,  and  strives  to 
cure  him ;  at  least  to  do  something  for  him,  not 
merely  with  him.  The  spirit  of  Christianity  comes 
into  the  Family,  but  the  recognition  of  Human 
Brotherhood  stops  mainly  there.  It  does  not  reach 
throughout  Society ;  it  has  little  influence  on  na¬ 
tional  Politics  or  international  Law  —  on  the  affairs 
of  the  World  taken  as  a  whole.  I  know  the  Idea 
of  Human  Brotherhood  has  more  influence  now 
than  hitherto ;  I  think  in  New  England  it  has  a 
wider  scope,  a  higher  range,  and  works  with  far 
more  power  than  elsewhere.  Our  hearts  bleed  for 
the  starving  thousands  of  Ireland,  whom  we  only 
read  of;  for  the  down-trodden  Slave,  though  of 
another  race  and  dyed  by  Heaven  with  another 
hue ;  yes,  for  the  Savage  and  the  Suffering  every¬ 
where.  The  hand  of  our  charity  goes  through 
every  land.  If  there  is  one  quality  for  which  the 
men  of  New  England  may  be  proud  it  is  this  — - 
their  sympathy  with  suffering  Man.  Still  we  are 
far  from  the  Christian  ideal.  We  still  drive  out  of 
Society  the  Ishmaels  and  Esaus.  This  we  do  not 
so  much  from  ill-will  as  want  of  thought,  but  there¬ 
by  we  lose  the  strength  of  these  outcasts.  So  much 
water  runs  over  the  dam  —  wasted  and  wasting  ! 

In  all  these  melancholy  cases  what  is  it  best  to' 
do  ?  what  shall  the  Parents  do  to  mend  their  dull 
Boy,  or  their  wicked  one  ?  There  are  two  methods 
which  may  be  tried.  One  is  the  Method  of  Force, 
sometimes  referred  to  Solomon  and  recommended 


by  the  maxim  “  Spare  not  the  rod  and  spoil  the 
child.”  That  is  the  Old  Testament  way,  “  Stripes 
are  prepared  for  the  Fool’s  back.”  The  mischief  is 
—  they  leave  it  no  wiser  than  they  found  it.  By 
the  law  of  the  Hebrews,  a  man  brought  his  stub¬ 
born  and  rebellious  son  before  the  magistrates  and 
deposed :  “  This  our  son  is  stubborn  and  rebellious : 
he  will  not  obey  our  voice.  He  is  a  glutton  and  a 
drunkard.”  Thereupon,  the  men  of  the  city  stoned 
him  with  stones  and  so  “  put  away  the  evil  from 
amongst  them  !  ”  That  was  the  Method  of  Force. 
It  may  bruise  the  body ;  it  may  fill  men  with  fear ; 
it  may  kill.  I  think  it  never  did  any  other  good. 
It  belonged  to  a  rude  and  bloody  age.  I  may  ask 
intelligent  men  who  have  tried  it  and  I  think  they 
will  confess  it  was  a  mistake.  I  think  I  may  ask 
intelligent  men  on  whom  it  has  been  tried  and  they 
will  say,  “  It  was  a  mistake  on  my  father’s  part,  but 
a  curse  to  me  !  ”  I  know  there  are  exceptions  to 
that  reply ;  still  I  think  it  will  be  general.  A  man 
is  seldom  elevated  by  an  appeal  to  low  motives ; 
always  by  addressing  what  is  high  and  manly 
within  him.  Is  fear  of  physical  pain  the  highest 
element  you  can  appeal  to  in  a  child ;  the  most 
effectual  ?  I  do  not  see  how  Satan  can  be  cast  out 
by  Satan.  I  think  a  Saviour  never  tries  it.  Yet 
this  Method  of  Force  is  brief  and  compact.  It 
requires  no  patience,  no  thought,  no  wisdom  for  its 
application,  and  but  a  moment’s  time.  For  this 
reason,  I  think,  it  is  still  retained  in  some  families 
and  many  schools,  to  the  injury  alike  of  all  con¬ 
cerned.  Blows  and  violent  words  are  not  correction 
* — often  but  an  adjournment  of  correction:  some¬ 
times  only  an  actual  confession  of  inability  to 
correct. 


14 


The  other  is  the  Method  of  Love,  and  of  Wis¬ 
dom  not  the  less.  Force  may  hide,  and  even  si¬ 
lence  effects  for  a  time ;  it  removes  not  the  real 
causes  of  evil.  By  the  Method  of  Love  and  Wis¬ 
dom  the  Parents  remove  the  causes ;  they  do  not 
tie  the  Demoniac,  they  cast  out  the  Demon,  not  by 
letting  in  Beelzebub,  the  Chief  Devil  —  but  by  the 
finger  of  God.  They  redress  the  child’s  folly  and 
evil  birth  by  their  own  wisdom  and  good  breeding. 
The  Day  drives  out  and  off  the  Night. 

Sometimes  you  see  that  worthy  parents  have  a 
weak  and  sickly  child,  feeble  in  body.  No  pains 
are  too  great  for  them  to  take  in  behalf  of  the  faint 
and  feeble  one.  What  self-denial  of  the  father; 
what  sacrifice  on  the  mother’s  part !  The  best  of 
medical  skill  is  procured ;  the  tenderest  watching 
is  not  spared.  No  outlay  of  money,  time,  or  sacri¬ 
fice  is  thought  too  much  to  save  the  child’s  life ; 
to  insure  a  firm  constitution  and  make  that  life  a 
blessing.  The  able-bodied  children  can  take  care 
of  themselves,  but  not  the  weak.  So  the  affection 
of  father  and  mother  centres  on  this  sickly  child. 
By  extraordinary  attention  the  feeble  becomes 
strong ;  the  deformed  is  transformed,  and  the 
grown  man,  strong  and  active,  blesses  his  mother 
for  health  not  less  than  life. 

Did  you  never  see  a  Robin  attend  to  her  imma¬ 
ture  and  callow  child  which  some  heedless  or 
wicked  boy  had  stolen  from  the  nest,  wounded  and 
left  on  the  ground,  half-living ;  left  to  perish  ?  Pa¬ 
tiently  she  brings  food  and  water,  gives  it  kind 
nursing.  Tenderly  she  broods  over  it  all  night 
upon  the  ground,  sheltering  its  tortured  body  from 
the  cold  air  of  night  and  morning’s  penetrating 


15 


dew.  She  perils  herself;  never  leaves  it  —  not  till 
life  is  gone.  That  is  Nature ;  the  Strong  protecting 
the  Feeble.  Human  nature  may  pause  and  con¬ 
sider  the  fowls  of  the  air,  whence  the  Greatest 
once  drew  his  lessons.  Human  history,  spite  of 
all  its  tears  and  blood,  is  full  of  beauty  and  majes¬ 
tic  worth.  But  it  shows  few  things  so  fair  as  the 
Mother  watching  thus  over  her  sickly  and  deformed 
child,  feeding  him  with  her  own  life.  What  if  she 
forewent  her  native  instinct  and  the  mother  said, 
“  My  Boy  is  deformed,  a  cripple  —  let  him  die”? 
Where  would  be  the  more  hideous  deformity  ? 

If  his  child  be  dull,  slow-witted,  what  pains  will 
a  good  father  take  to  instruct  him ;  still  more  if  he 
is  vicious,  born  with  a  low  organization,  with  bad 
propensities  —  what  admonitions  will  he  adminis¬ 
ter  ;  what  teachers  will  he  consult ;  what  expedi¬ 
ents  will  he  try ;  what  prayers  will  he  not  pray  for 
his  stubborn  and  rebellious  son !  Though  one  ex¬ 
periment  fail,  he  tries  another,  and  then  again,  re¬ 
luctant  to  give  over !  Did  it  never  happen  to  one 
of  you  to  be  such  a  Child,  to  have  outgrown  that 
rebellion  and  wickedness!  Remember  the  pains 
taken  with  you ;  remember  the  agony  your  mother 
felt ;  the  shame  that  bowed  your  father’s  head  so 
oft  and  brought  such  bitter  tears  adown  those  ven¬ 
erable  cheeks.  You  cannot  pay  for  that  agony,  that 
shame,  not  pay  the  hearts  that  burst  with  both  — 
yet  uttering  only  a  prayer  for  you.  Pay  it  back 
then,  if  you  can,  to  others  like  yourself,  stubborn 
and  rebellious  sons. 

Has  none  of  you  ever  been  such  a  Father  or 
Mother?  You  know  then  the  sad  yearnings  of 
heart  which  tried  you.  The  World  condemned 


16 


you  and  your  wicked  child,  and  said,  “  Let  the  Eld¬ 
ers  stone  him  with  stones.  The  Gallows  waiteth 
for  its  own !  ”  Not  so  you !  You  said :  “  Nay,  now, 
wait  a  little.  Perchance  the  boy  will  mend.  Come, 
I  will  try  again.  Crush  him  not  utterly  and  a  Fa¬ 
ther’s  heart  beside !  ”  The  more  he  was  wicked, 
the  more  assiduous  were  you  for  his  recovery,  for 
his  elevation.  You  saw  that  he  would  not  keep 
up  with  the  moral  march  of  men ;  that  he  was  a 
Barbarian,  a  Savage,  yes  almost  a  Beast  amongst 
men.  You  saw  this ;  yes  felt  it  too  as  none  others 
felt.  Yet  you  could  not  condemn  him  wholly  and 
without  hope.  You  saw  some  good  mixed  with 
his  evil ;  some  causes  for  the  evil  and  excuses  for 
it  which  others  were  blind  to.  Because  you 
mourned  most  you  pitied  most  —  all  from  the 
abundance  of  your  love.  Though  even  in  your 
highest  hour  of  prayer,  the  sad  conviction  came 
that  work  or  prayer  was  all  in  vain  —  you  never 
gave  him  over  to  the  world’s  reproach,  but  inter¬ 
posed  your  fortune,  character;  yes,  your  own  person 
to  take  the  blows  which  the  severe  and  tyrannous 
world  kept  laying  on.  At  last  if  he  would  not 
repent,  you  hid  him  away,  the  best  you  could,  from 
the  mocking  sight  of  other  men,  but  never  shut 
him  from  your  heart ;  never  from  remembrance  in 
your  deepest  prayers.  How  the  whole  family  suf¬ 
fers  for  the  Prodigal  till  he  returns.  When  he 
comes  back,  why  you  rejoice  over  one  recovered 
Olive-Plant  more  than  over  all  the  trees  of  your 
field  which  no  storm  has  ever  broke  or  bowed. 
How  you  went  forth  to  meet  him  ;  with  what  joy 
rejoiced !  “For  this  my  son  was  lost  and  is  found,” 
says  the  old  man;  “He  was  dead  and  is  alive  once 


17 


more.  Let  us  pray  and  be  glad !  ”  With  what  a  se¬ 
rene  and  hallowed  countenance  you  met  your 
friends  and  neighbors,  as  their  glad  heart  smiled  up 
in  their  faces  when  the  Prodigal  came  home  from 
riot  and  swine’s-bread,  a  new  man  safe  and  sound  ! 
Many  such  things  have  I  seen  and  hearts  long  cold 
grew  bright  and  warm  again.  Towards  evening 
the  clouds  broke  asunder  —  Simeon  saw  his  conso¬ 
lation  and  went  home  in  sunlight  and  in  peace. 

The  general  result  of  this  treatment  in  the  Fam¬ 
ily  is  that  the  Dull  Boy  learns  by  degrees,  learns 
what  he  is  fit  for :  the  Straggler  joins  the  troop, 
and  keeps  step  with  the  rest,  nay  sometimes  be¬ 
comes  the  leader  of  the  march  :  the  Vicious  Boy 
is  corrected ;  even  the  faults  of  his  organization  get 
overcome,  not  suddenly  but  at  length.  The  re¬ 
jected  stone  finds  its  place  on  the  wall,  and  its  use. 
Such  is  not  always  the  result.  Some  will  not  be 
mended.  I  stop  not  now  to  ask  the  cause  ;  some 
will  not  return  though  you  go  out  to  meet  them  a 
great  way  off.  What  then  ?  will  you  refuse  to  go  ? 
can  you  wholly  abandon  a  friend  or  a  child  who 
thus  deserts  himself?  Is  he  so  bad  that  he  cannot 
be  made  better?  Perhaps ’t  is  so.  Can  you  not 
hinder  him  from  being  worse  ?  Are  you  so  good 
that  you  must  forsake  him  ?  Did  not  God  send  his 
greatest,  noblest,  purest  son  to  seek  and  save  the 
lost ;  send  him  to  call  sinners  to  repent  ?  When 
sinners  slew  him  —  did  God  forsake  Mankind  ? 
Not  one  of  those  sinners  did  his  love  forget. 

Does  the  good  physician  spend  the  night  in  feast¬ 
ing  with  the  sound  or  in  watching  with  the  sick  ? 
Nay  though  the  sick  man  be  past  all  hope,  he  will 
look  in  to  soothe  affliction  which  he  cannot  cure ; 

2 


18 


at  least  to  speak  a  word  of  friendly  cheer.  The 
wise  teacher  spends  most  pains  with  backward 
boys,  and  is  most  bountiful  himself  where  Nature 
seems  most  niggard  in  her  gifts.  What  would  you 
say  if  a  teacher  refused  to  help  a  boy  because  the 
boy  was  slow  to  learn ;  because  he  now  and  then 
broke  through  the  rules?  What  if  the  mother 
said:  “My  boy  is  a  sickly  dunce,  not  worth  the 
pains  of  rearing.  Let  him  die !  ”  What  if  the 
father  said :  “  He  is  a  born  villain,  to  be  bred 
only  for  the  gallows  —  what  use  to  toil  or  pray  for 
him !  Let  the  Hangman  take  my  son !  ” 

What  shall  be  done  for  Criminals,  the  backward 
children  of  Society,  who  refuse  to  keep  up  with 
the  moral  or  legal  advance  of  Mankind?  They 
are  a  Dangerous  Class.  There  are  three  things 
which  are  sometimes  confounded ;  there  is  Error, 
an  unintentional  violation  of  a  Law.  Sometimes 
this  comes  from  abundance  of  life  and  energy; 
sometimes  from  ignorance,  general  or  special ; 
sometimes  from  heedlessness,  which  is  ignorance 
for  the  time.  Next  there  is  Crime,  the  violation  of  a 
human  Statute.  Suppose  the  Statute  also  repre¬ 
sents  a  Law  of  God  —  the  violation  thereof  may  be 
the  result  of  ignorance,  or  of  design,  it  may  come 
from  a  bad  heart.  Then  it  becomes  a  Sin  —  the 
wilful  violation  of  a  known  Law  of  God.  There 

i 

are  many  Errors  which  are  not  Crimes ;  and  the 
best  men  often  commit  them  innocently,  but  not 
without  harm,  violating  laws  of  the  body  or  the 
soul  which  they  have  not  grown  up  to  understand. 
There  have  been  many  Crimes  —  yes,  conscious 
violations  of  man’s  law  which  were  not  Sins,  but 


19 


rather  a  keeping  of  God’s  Law.  There  are  still  a 
great  many  Sins  not  forbidden  by  any  human  stat¬ 
ute  —  not  considered  as  Crimes.  It  is  no  Crime  to 
go  and  fight  in  a  wicked  war ;  nay  it  is  thought  a 
virtue.  It  was  a  Crime  in  the  Heroes  of  the  Ameri¬ 
can  Revolution  to  demand  the  unalienable  Rights 
of  man  —  they  were  “  Traitors  ”  who  did  it ;  a  Crime 
in  Jesus  to  sum  up  the  “  Law  and  the  Prophets  ” 
in  one  word,  Love  —  he  was  reckoned  an  “  Infi¬ 
del,”  guilty  of  blasphemy  against  Moses !  Now  to 
punish  an  Error  as  a  Crime,  a  Crime  as  a  Sin,  leads 
to  confusion  at  the  first,  and  to  much  worse  than 
confusion  in  the  end. 

But  there  are  Crimes  which  are  a  violation  of  the 
eternal  principles  of  Justice.  It  is  of  such  and  the 
men  who  commit  them  that  I  am  now  to  speak. 
What  shall  be  done  for  the  Dangerous  Classes  — 
the  Criminals? 

The  first  question  is,  What  end  shall  we  aim  at 
in  dealing  with  them  ?  The  means  must  be  suited 
to  accomplish  that  end.  We  may  desire  Ven¬ 
geance  ;  then  the  hurt  inflicted  on  the  criminal  will 
be  proportioned  to  the  loss  or  hurt  sustained  by  So¬ 
ciety.  A  man  has  stolen  my  goods,  injured  my  per¬ 
son,  traduced  my  good  name,  sought  to  take  my  life. 
I  will  not  ask  for  the  Motive  of  his  deeds,  or  the 
Cause  of  that  motive.  I  will  only  consider  my 
own  damage  and  will  make  him  smart  for  that. 
I  will  use  violence  —  having  an  eye  for  an  eye 
and  a  tooth  for  a  tooth.  I  will  deliver  him  over  to 
the  tormentors  till  my  vengeance  is  satisfied.  If 
he  slew  my  friend,  or  sought  to  slay  but  lacked 
the  power,  as  I  have  the  ability  I  will  kill  him ! 
This  desire  of  vengeance,  of  paying  a  hurt  with  a 


20 


hurt,  has  still  very  much  influence  on  our  treat¬ 
ment  of  Criminals.  I  fear  it  is  still  the  chief  aim  of 
our  penal  Jurisprudence.  When  vengeance  is  the 
aim,  violence  is  the  most  suitable  method;  Jails 
and  the  Gallows  most  appropriate  instruments! 
But  is  it  right  to  take  vengeance ;  for  me  to  hurt  a 
man  to-day  solely  because  he  hurt  me  yesterday? 
If  so,  the  proof  of  that  Right  must  be  found  in  my 
nature,  or  in  the  Law  of  God ;  a  man  can  make  a 
Statute,  God  only  a  Right.  As  I  study  my  nature 
I  find  no  such  Right;  Reason  gives  me  none; 
Conscience  none ;  Religion  quite  as  little.  Doubt¬ 
less  I  have  a  Right  to  defend  myself  by  all  manly 
means;  to  protect  myself  for  the  future  no  less 
than  for  the  present.  In  doing  that  it  may  be 
needful  that  I  should  restrain  and  in  restraining 
seize  and  hold,  and  in  holding  incidentally  hurt  my 
opponent.  But  I  cannot  see  what  Right  I  have  in 
cold  blood  wilfully  to  hurt  a  man  because  he  once 
hurt  me,  and  does  not  intend  to  repeat  the  wrong. 
Do  I  look  to  the  authority  of  the  greatest  Son  of 
man  ?  I  find  no  allusion  to  such  a  Right.  I  find 
no  Law  of  God  which  allows  vengeance.  In  his 
Providence  I  find  Justice  everywhere  as  beautiful 
as  certain ;  but  vengeance  nowhere.  I  know  this 
is  not  the  common  notion  entertained  of  God  and 
his  Providence.  I  shudder  to  think  at  the  Barbarism 
which  yet  prevails  under  the  guise  of  Christianity ; 
the  vengeance  which  is  sought  for  in  the  name  of 
God! 

The  aim  may  be  not  to  revenge  a  crime  but  to 
prevent  it;  to  deter  the  offender  from  repeating  the 
deed,  and  others  from  the  beginning  thereof  In 
all  modern  legislation  the  vindictive  spirit  is  slowly 


21 


r 


yielding  to  the  design  of  preventing  crime.  The 
method  is  to  inflict  certain  uniform  and  specific 
penalties  for  each  offence  proportionate  to  the  dam¬ 
age  which  the  criminal  has  done;  to  make  the 
punishment  so  certain,  so  severe,  or  so  infamous 
that  the  offender  shall  forbear  for  the  future,  and 
innocent  men  be  deterred  from  crime.  But  have 
we  a  right  to  punish  a  man  for  the  example’s  sake  ? 
I  may  give  up  my  life  to  save  a  thousand  lives,  or 
one,  if  I  will.  But  Society  has  no  right  to  take  it, 
without  my  consent,  to  save  the  whole  Human 
Race !  I  admit  that  Society  has  the  right  of  Emi¬ 
nent  Domain  over  my  property,  and  may  take  my 
land  for  a  street ;  may  destroy  my  house  to  save 
the  town ;  perhaps  seize  on  my  store  of  provisions 
in  time  of  famine.  It  can  render  me  an  equiva¬ 
lent  for  those  things.  I  have  not  the  same  lien  on 
any  portion  of  the  universe  as  on  my  Life,  my  Per¬ 
son.  To  these  I  have  an  unalienable  Right  which 
no  man  has  given,  which  all  men  can  never  justly 
take  away.  For  any  injustice,  wilfully  done  to  me, 
the  Human  Race  can  render  me  no  equivalent. 

I  know  society  claims  the  right  of  Eminent  Do¬ 
main  over  Person  and  Life  not  less  than  over 
House  and  Land  —  to  take  both  for  the  common¬ 
wealth.  I  deny  the  Right  —  certainly  it  has  never 
been  shown.  Hence  to  me  —  resting  on  the  broad 
ground  of  natural  justice  —  the  Law  of  God  — 
capital  punishment  seems  wholly  inadmissible  — 
Homicide  with  the  pomp  and  formality  of  Law. 
It  is  a  relic  of  the  old  barbarism  —  paying  hurt  for 
hurt.  No  one  will  contend  that  it  is  inflicted  for 
the  offender’s  good.  For  the  good  of  others  I  con¬ 
tend  we  have  no  right  to  inflict  it  without  the  suf- 


22 


ferer’s  consent.  To  put  a  criminal  to  death  seems 
to  me  as  foolish  as  for  the  child  to  beat  the  stool  it 
has  stumbled  over,  and  as  useless  too.  I  am  aston¬ 
ished  that  nations  with  the  name  of  Christian  ever 
on  their  lips,  continue  to  disgrace  themselves  by 
killing  men,  formally  and  in  cold  blood ;  to  do  this 
with  prayers  —  “  Forgive  us  as  we  forgive  ;  ”  doing 
it  in  the  name  of  God  !  I  do  not  wonder  that  in  the 
codes  of  nations,  Hebrew  or  Heathen,  far  lower 
than  ourselves  in  civilization,  we  should  find  laws 
enforcing  this  punishment ;  laws  too  enacted  in  the 
name  of  God.  But  it  fills  me  with  amazement  that 
worthy  men  in  these  days  should  go  hack  to  such 
sources  for  their  wisdom;  should  walk  dry-shod 
through  the  Gospels  and  seek  in  records  of  a  bar¬ 
barous  people  to  justify  this  atrocious  act !  Famine, 
Pestilence,  War  are  terrible  evils,  but  no  one  is  so 
dreadful  in  its  effects  as  the  general  prevalence  of 
a  great  theological  idea  that  is  false. 

It  makes  me  shudder  to  recollect  that  out  of  the 
twenty-eight  states  of  this  Union  twenty-seven 
should  still  continue  the  Gallows  as  a  part  of  the 
furniture  of  a  Christian  government.  I  hope  our 
own  State  —  dignified  already  by  so  many  noble 
acts  —  will  soon  rid  herself  of  the  stain.  Let  us 
try  the  experiment  of  abolishing  this  penalty,  if  we 
will  for  twenty  years,  or  but  ten  —  and  I  am  confi¬ 
dent  we  shall  never  return  to  that  punishment.  If 
a  man  be  incapable  of  living  in  Society,  so  ill-born 
or  ill-bred  that  you  cannot  cure  or  mend  him  — 
why,  hide  him  away  out  of  Society.  Let  him  do 
no  harm,  but  treat  him  kindly,  not  like  a  wolf  but 
a  man.  Make  him  work,  to  be  useful  to  himself 
to  society,  but  do  not  kill  him.  Or  if  you  do,  never 


23 


say  again,  “  Forgive  us  our  trespasses  as  we  for¬ 
give  those  that  trespass  against  us.”  What  if  He 
should  take  you  at  your  word  !  What  would  you 
think  of  a  father  who  to-morrow  should  take  the 
Old  Testament  for  his  legal  warrant  and  bring  his 
son  before  your  Mayor  and  Aldermen  because  he 
was  “stubborn  and  rebellious,  a  drunkard  and  a 
glutton,”  and  they  should  stone  him  to  death  in 
front  of  the  City  Hall !  But  there  is  quite  as  good 
a  warrant  in  the  Old  Testament  for  that  as  for 
hanging  a  man.  The  law  is  referred  to  Jehovah  as 
its  author.  Is  not  Society  the  Father  of  us  all  — 
our  Protector  and  Defender  ?  How  much  better  is 
it  to  choke  the  life  out  of  a  man  behind  the  prison 
wall  ?  Hanging  is  vengeance  ;  nothing  but  ven¬ 
geance.  I  can  readily  conceive  of  that  great  Son 
of  Man,  whom  the  loyal  world  so  readily  adores, 
performing  all  needful  human  works  with  manly 
dignity.  Artists  once  loved  to  paint  the  Saviour  in 
the  lowly  toil  of  lowly  men,  his  garments  covered 
with  the  dust  of  common  life  ;  his  soul  sullied  by 
no  pollution.  But  paint  him  to  your  fancy  as  an 
executioner ;  legally  killing  a  man ;  the  halter  in 
his  hands,  hanging  Judas  for  high  treason  !  You 
see  the  relation  which  that  punishment  bears  to 
Christianity.  Yet  what  was  unchristian  in  Jesus 
does  not  become  Christian  in  the  Sheriff  We  call 
ourselves  Christians ;  we  often  repeat  the  name, 
the  words  of  Christ, — but  his  Prayer?  oh  no  — 
not  that. 

There  are  now  in  this  land  I  think  sixteen  men 
under  sentence  of  death ;  sixteen  men  to  be  hanged 
till  they  are  dead  !  Is  there  not  in  the  nation  skill 
to  heal  these  men?  Perhaps  ?t is  so.  I  have 


24 


known  hearts  which  seemed  to  me  cold  stones,  so 
hard,  so  dry.  No  kindly  steel  had  alchemy  to  win 
a  spark  from  them.  Yet  their  owners  went  about 
the  streets ;  and  smiled  their  hollow  smiles ;  the 
ghastly  brother  cast  his  shadow  in  the  sun,  or 
wrapped  his  cloak  about  him  in  the  wintry  hour, 
and  yet  the  world  went  on  though  the  worst  of 
men  remained  unhanged.  Perhaps  you  cannot 
cure  these  men !  —  is  there  not  power  enough  to 
keep  them  from  doing  harm ;  to  make  them  useful  ? 
Shame  on  us  that  we  know  no  better  than  thus  to 
pour  out  life  upon  the  dust,  and  then  with  reeking 
hands  turn  to  the  poor  and  weak  and  say,  “Ye  shall 
not  kill.” 

But  if  the  Prevention  of  crime  be  the  design  of 
the  punishment,  then  we  must  not  only  seek  to  hin¬ 
der  the  Innocent  from  vice,  but  we  must  reform  the 
Criminal.  Do  our  methods  of  punishment  effect 
that  object  ?  During  the  past  year  we  have  com¬ 
mitted  to  the  various  prisons  in  Massachusetts  5,669 
persons  for  crime.  How  many  of  them  will  be 
reformed  and  cured  by  this  treatment,  and  so  live 
honest  and  useful  lives  hereafter  ?  I  think  very 
few.  The  facts  show  that  a  great  many  criminals 
are  never  reformed  by  their  punishment.  Thus  in 
France,  taking  the  average  of  four  years,  it  seems 
that  twenty-two  out  of  each  hundred  criminals 
were  banished  oftener  than  once ;  in  Scotland 
thirty-six  out  of  the  hundred.  Of  the  78  received 
at  your  State’s  Prison  the  last  year — 17  have 
been  sent  to  that  very  Prison  before.  How  many 
of  them  have  been  tenants  of  other  Institutions  I 
know  not,  but  as  only  23  of  the  78  are  natives  of 
this  State  it  is  plain  that  many,  under  other  names, 


25 


may  have  been  confined  in  jail  before.  Yet  of 
these  78,  ten  are  less  than  20  years  old.^  Of  35 
men  sent  from  Boston  to  the  State’s  Prison  in  one 
year,  14  had  been  there  before.  More  than  half  the 
inmates  of  the  House  of  Correction  in  this  city  are 
punished  oftener  than  once !  These  facts  show 
that  if  we  aim  at  the  Reformation  of  the  offender 
we  fail  most  signally.  Yet  every  criminal  not  re¬ 
formed  lives  mainly  at  the  charge  of  society ;  and 
lives  too  in  the  most  costly  way,  for  the  articles 
he  steals  have  seldom  the  same  value  to  him  as  to 
the  lawful  owner. 

It  seems  to  me  that  our  whole  method  of  pun¬ 
ishing  crimes  is  a  false  one ;  that  but  little  good 
comes  of  it,  or  can  come.  We  beat  the  stool  which 
we  have  stumbled  over.  We  punish  a  man  in 
proportion  to  the  loss  or  the  fear  of  Society ;  not  in 
proportion  to  the  offender’s  state  of  mind;  —  not 
with  a  careful  desire  to  improve  that  state  of  mind. 
This  is  wise  if  Vengeance  be  the  aim ;  if  Refor¬ 
mation,  it  seems  sheer  folly.  I  know  our  present 
method  is  the  result  of  six  thousand  years’  experi¬ 
ence  of  Mankind ;  I  know  how  easy  it  is  to  find 
fault  —  how  difficult  to  devise  a  better  mode.  Still 
the  facts  are  so  plain  that  one  with  half  an  eye 
cannot  fail  to  see  the  falseness  of  the  present  meth¬ 
ods.  To  remove  the  evil  we  must  remove  its 
Cause,  —  so  let  us  look  a  little  into  this  matter  and 
see  from  what  quarter  our  criminals  proceed. 

Here  are  two  classes.  I.  the  Foes  of  Society; 
men  that  are  Criminals  in  Soul,  born-criminals, 
who  have  a  bad  nature.  The  cause  of  their  crime 
therefore  is  to  be  found  in  their  nature  itself  in 


*  See  other  statistics  in  u  Sermon  of  the  Perishing  Classes,”  p.  16. 


26 


their  organization  if  you  will.  All  experience 
shows  that  some  men  are  born  with  a  depraved 
organization,  an  excess  of  animal  passions,  or  a 
deficiency  of  other  powers  to  balance  them. 

II.  There  are  the  Victims  of  Society  ;  men  that 
become  Criminals  by  Circumstances,  made-crimi¬ 
nals,  not  born  ;  men  who  become  criminals  not  so 
much  from  strength  of  Evil  in  their  Soul,  or  excess 
of  evil  propensities  in  their  organization,  as  from 
strength  of  Evil  in  their  Circumstances.  I  do  not 
say  that  a  man’s  character  is  wholly  determined 
by  the  circumstances  in  which  he  is  placed,  but  all 
experience  shows  that  circumstances,  such  as 
exposure  in  youth  to  good  men  or  bad  men,  edu¬ 
cation —  intellectual,  moral,  and  religious,  or  neg¬ 
lect  thereof  entire  or  partial,  have  a  vast  influence 
in  forming  the  character  of  men,  especially  of  men 
not  well  endowed  by  nature. 

Now  the  criminals  in  soul  are  the  most  danger¬ 
ous  of  men,  the  born  Foes  of  Society.  I  will  not 
at  this  moment  undertake  to  go  behind  their  or¬ 
ganization  and  ask,  “How  comes  it  that  they  are 
so  ill-born  ?  ”  I  stop  now  at  that  fact.  The  cause 
of  their  crime  is  in  their  bodily  constitution  itself. 
This  is  always  a  small  class.  There  are  in  New 
England  perhaps  five  hundred  men  born  blind  or 
deaf.  Apart  from  the  Idiots  I  think  there  are  not 
half  so  many  who  by  nature  and  bodily  constitu¬ 
tion  are  incapable  of  attaining  the  average  moral¬ 
ity  of  the  race  at  this  day ;  not  so  many  born  Foes 
of  Society  as  are  born  blind  or  deaf. 

The  criminals  from  circumstances  become  what 
they  are  by  the  action  of  causes  which  may  be 
ascertained,  guarded  against,  mitigated,  and  at  last 
overcome  and  removed.  These  men  are  born  of 


27 


poor  parents,  and  find  it  difficult  to  satisfy  the  nat¬ 
ural  wants  of  food,  clothing,  and  shelter.  They  get 
little  culture,  intellectual  or  moral.  The  School- 
house  is  open  —  but  the  parent  does  not  send  the 
children,  he  wants  their  services  —  to  beg  for  him, 
perhaps  to  steal,  it  may  be  to  do  little  services 
which  lie  within  their  power.  Besides,  the  child 
must  be  ill-clad,  and  so  a  mark  is  set  on  him.  The 
Boy  of  the  Perishing  Classes,  with  but  common 
endowments,  cannot  learn  at  school  as  one  of  the 
Thrifty  or  Abounding  Class.  Then  he  receives  no 
stimulus  at  home ;  there  every  thing  discourages 
his  attempts.  He  cannot  share  the  pleasure  and 
sport  of  his  youthful  fellows.  His  dress,  his  un¬ 
cleanly  habits,  the  result  of  misery,  forbid  all  that. 
So  the  children  of  the  Perishing  herd  together,  igno¬ 
rant,  ill-fed,  and  miserably  clad.  You  do  not  find 
the  sons  of  this  Class  in  your  Colleges,  in  your  High 
Schools  where  all  is  free  for  the  people  ;  few  even 
in  the  Grammar  Schools;  few  in  the  Churches. 
Though  born  into  the  nineteenth  century  after 
Christ,  they  grow  up  almost  in  the  barbarism  of  the 
nineteenth  century  before  him.  Children  that  are 
blind  and  deafj  though  born  with  a  superior  organ¬ 
ization,  if  left  to  themselves  become  only  savages, 
little  more  than  animals.  What  are  we  to  expect  of 
children,  bom  indeed  with  eyes  and  ears  but  yet 
shut  out  from  the  culture  of  the  age  they  live  in  ? 
In  the  corruption  of  a  city,  in  the  midst  of  its  in¬ 
tenser  life  —  what  wonder  that  they  associate  with 
crime,  that  the  moral  instinct  baffled  and  cheated 
of  its  due  becomes  so  powerless  in  the  Boy  or 
Girl ;  what  wonder  that  Reason  never  gets  devel¬ 
oped  there ;  nor  Conscience  nor  that  blessed  Relig- 


28 


ious  Sense  learns  ever  to  assert  its  power  ?  Think 
of  the  temptations  that  beset  the  boy ;  —  those  yet 
more  revolting  which  address  the  other  sex.  Op- 
portunities  for  crime  continually  offer.  Want  im¬ 
pels,  Desire  leagues  with  opportunity  —  and  the 
result  we  know.  Add  to  all  this  the  curse  that 
creates  so  much  disease,  poverty,  wretchedness  and 
so  perpetually  begets  crime  —  I  mean  Intemper¬ 
ance  !  That  is  almost  the  only  pleasure  of  the 
Perishing  Class.  What  recognized  amusement 
have  they  but  this  —  of  drinking  themselves  drunk  ? 
Do  you  wonder  at  this ;  with  no  air,  nor  light,  nor 
water,  with  scanty  food  and  a  miserable  dress,  with 
no  culture  —  living  in  a  cellar  or  a  garret,  crowded, 
stifling,  and  offensive  even  to  the  rudest  sense  — 
do  you  wonder  that  man  or  woman  seeks  a  brief 
vacation  of  misery  in  the  dram-shop  and  in  its 
drunkenness?  I  wonder  not.  Under  such  cir- 
cumstances  how  many  of  you  would  have  done 
better?  To  suffer  continually  from  lack  of  what  is 
needful  for  the  natural  bodily  wants  —  of  food,  of 
shelter,  of  warmth  —  that  suffering  is  Misery.  It 
is  not  too  much  to  say  there  are  always  in  this 
city  thousands  of  persons  who  smart  under  that 
misery.  They  are  indeed  a  Perishing  Class. 

Now  almost  all  our  criminals  —  Victims  and 
Foes,  come  from  this  portion  of  Society.  Most  of 
those  born  with  an  organization  that  is  predisposed 
to  crime  are  born  there.  The  laws  of  nature  are 
unavoidably  violated  from  generation  to  generation. 
Unnatural  results  must  follow.  The  misfortunes 
of  the  father  are  visited  on  his  miserable  child. 
Cows  and  sheep  degenerate  when  the  demands 
of  nature  are  not  met  —  and  men  degenerate  not 


29 


less.  Only  the  low,  animal  instincts,  those  of  self- 
defence  and  self-perpetuation  get  developed ;  these 
with  preternatural  force.  The  animal  man  wakes, 
becomes  brutish  while  the  spiritual  element  sleeps 
within  him.  Unavoidably  then  the  Perishing  is 
mother  of  the  Dangerous  Class. 

I  deny  not  that  a  portion  of  Criminals  come  from 
other  sources — but  at  least  nine  tenths  thereof  pro¬ 
ceed  from  this  quarter.  Of  273,818  criminals  pun¬ 
ished  in  France  from  1825  to  1839  more  than  half 
were  wholly  unable  even  to  read,  and  had  been 
brought  up  subject  to  no  family  affections.  Out 
of  70  criminals  in  one  prison  at  Glasgow  who  were 
under  eighteen,  50  were  orphans  having  lost  one  or 
both  parents,  and  nearly  all  the  rest  had  parents  of 
bad  character  and  reputation.  Taking  all  the  crim¬ 
inals  in  England  and  Wales  in  1841,  there  were  not 
eight  in  a  hundred  that  could  read  and  write  well. 
In  our  country,  where  everybody  gets  a  mouthful 
of  education  though  scarce  any  one  a  full  meal,  the 
result  is  a  little  different.  Thus  of  the  790  prisoners 
in  the  Mount  Pleasant  State’s  Prison  in  New  York, 
100  it  is  said  could  read  and  understand.  Yet  of 
all  our  criminals  only  a  very  small  proportion 
have  been  in  a  condition  to  obtain  the  average 
intellectual  and  moral  culture  of  our  times. 

Our  present  mode  of  treating  criminals  does  no 
good  to  this  class  of  men,  these  Victims  of  Circum¬ 
stances.  I  do  not  know  that  their  improvement  is 
even  contemplated.  We  do  not  ask  what  causes 
made  this  man  a  criminal  and  then  set  ourselves  to 
remove  those  causes.  We  look  only  at  the  crime  ; 
so  we  punish  practically,  a  man  because  he  had  a 
wicked  father ;  because  his  education  was  neglect- 


/ 


30 

ed,  and  he  exposed  to  the  baneful  influence  of 
unholy  men.  In  the  main  we  treat  all  criminals 
alike  if  guilty  of  the  same  offence  —  though  the 
same  act  denotes  very  different  degrees  of  crimi¬ 
nality  in  the  different  men,  and  the  same  punish¬ 
ment  is  attended  with  quite  opposite  results.  Two 
men  commit  similar  crimes,  we  sentence  them 
both  to  the  State’s  Prison  for  ten  years.  At  the 
expiration  of  one  year  let  us  suppose  one  man  has 
thoroughly  reformed  and  has  made  strict  and  sol¬ 
emn  resolutions  to  pursue  an  honest  and  useful 
life.  I  do  not  say  such  a  result  is  to  be  expected 
from  such  treatment ;  still  it  is  possible,  and  I  think 
has  happened,  perhaps  many  times.  We  do  not 
discharge  the  man ;  we  care  nothing  for  his  peni¬ 
tence  ;  nothing  for  his  improvement ;  we  keep  him 
nine  years  more.  That  is  an  injustice  to  him ;  we 
have  robbed  him  of  nine  years  of  time  —  which  he 
might  have  converted  into  life.  It  is  unjust  also  to 
Society  which  needs  the  presence  and  the  labor  of 
all  that  can  serve.  The  man  has  been  a  burthen 
to  himself  and  to  us.  Suppose  at  the  expiration  of 
his  ten  years  the  other  man  is  not  reformed  at  all ; 
this  result,  I  fear,  happens  in  the  great  majority  of 
cases.  He  is  no  better  for  what  he  has  suffered  — 
we  know  that  he  will  return  to  his  career  of  crime 
— -with  new  energy  and  with  even  malice.  Still 
he  is  discharged.  This  is  unjust  to  him,  for  he 
cannot  bear  the  fresh  exposure  to  circumstances 
which  corrupted  him  at  first,  and  he  will  fall  lower 
still.  It  is  unjust  to  Society,  for  the  property  and 
the  persons  of  all  are  exposed  to  his  passions  just 
as  much  as  before.  He  feels  indignant  as  if  he 
had  suffered  a  wrong.  He  says,  “  Society  has 


31 


taken  vengeance  on  me,  when  I  was  to  be  pitied 
more  than  blamed.  Now  I  will  have  my  turn. 
They  will  not  allow  me  to  live  by  honest  toil.  I 
will  learn  their  lesson.  I  will  plunder  their  wealth, 
their  roof  shall  blaze  !  ”  He  will  live  at  the  expense 
of  Society,  and  in  the  way  least  profitable  and 
most  costly  to  Mankind.  This  idle  Savage  will 
levy  destructive  contributions  on  the  rich,  the 
thrifty,  and  the  industrious.  Yes,  he  will  help 
teach  others  the  wickedness  which  himself  once, 
and  perhaps  unavoidably  learned.  So  in  the  very 
bosom  of  Society  there  is  a  horde  of  marauders 
waging  perpetual  war  against  Mankind. 

Do  not  say  my  sympathies  are  with  the  wicked, 
not  the  industrious  and  good.  It  is  not  so.  My 
sympathies  are  not  confined  to  one  class,  honora¬ 
ble  or  despised.  But  it  seems  to  me  this  whole 
method  of  keeping  a  criminal  a  definite  time  and 
then  discharging  him,  whether  made  better  or 
worse,  is  a  mistake.  Certainly  it  is  so  if  we  aim 
at  his  reformation.  What  if  a  shepherd  made  it  a 
rule  to  look  one  hour  for  each  lost  sheep,  and  then 
return  with  or  without  the  wanderer  ?  What  if  a 
smith  decreed  that  one  hour  and  no  more  should 
be  spent  in  shoeing  a  horse,  and  so  worked  that 
time  on  each,  though  half  that  time  were  enough 
—  or  sent  home  the  beast  with  but  three  shoes,  or 
two,  or  one,  because  the  hour  passed  by  ?  What  if 
the  physicians  decreed  that  all  men  sick  of  some 
contagious  disease  should  spend  six  weeks  in  the 
hospital,  then  if  the  patient  were  found  well  the 
next  day  after  admission,  still  kept  him  the  other 
forty ;  or  if  not  mended  at  the  last  day,  sent  him 
out  sick  to  the  world?  Such  a  course  would  be 


32 


less  unjust,  less  inhuman,  only  the  wrong  is  more 
obvious. 

To  aggravate  the  matter  still  more,  we  have  made 
the  punishment  more  infamous  than  the  crime.  A 
man  may  commit  great  crimes  which  indicate 
deep  depravity ;  may  escape  the  legal  punishment 
thereof,  by  gold,  by  flight,  by  further  crimes,  and 
yet  hold  up  his  head  unblushing  and  unrepentant 
amongst  Mankind.  Let  him  commit  a  small  crime r 
which  shall  involve  no  moral  guilt  and  be  legally 
punished  —  who  respects  him  again  ?  What  years 
of  noble  life  are  deemed  enough  to  wipe  the  stain 
out  of  his  reputation  ?  Nay  his  children  after  him 
to  the  third  generation  must  bear  the  curse ! 

The  evil  does  not  stop  with  the  infamy.  A  guilty 
man  has  served  out  his  time.  He  is  thoroughly 
resolved  on  industry  and  a  moral  life.  Perhaps  he 
has  not  learned  that  crime  is  wrong,  but  found  it 
unprofitable.  He  will  live  away  from  the  circum¬ 
stances  which  led  him  before  to  crime.  He  comes 
out  of  Prison,  and  the  Jail- Mark  is  on  him.  He  now 
suffers  the  severest  part  of  his  punishment.  Friends 
and  relations  shun  him.  He  is  doomed  and  solitary 
in  the  midst  of  the  crowd.  Honest  men  will  sel¬ 
dom  employ  him.  The  Abounding  Class  look  on 
him  with  shuddering  pity ;  the  Thriving  loathe  the 
convict’s  touch.  He  is  driven  among  the  Dangerous 
and  the  Perishing ;  they  open  their  arms  and  offer 
him  their  destructive  sympathy.  They  minister 
to  his  wants ;  they  exaggerate  his  wrongs  ;  they 
nourish  his  indignation.  His  direction  is  no  longer 
in  his  own  hands.  His  good  resolutions  —  he 
knows  they  were  good,  but  only  impossible.  He 
looks  back,  and  sees  nothing  but  crime  and  the 


33 


vengeance  Society  takes  for  the  crime.  He  looks 
around  —  and  the  world  seems  thrusting  at  him 
from  all  quarters.  He  looks  forward  —  and  what 
prospect  is  there  ?  “  Hope  never  comes,  that  comes 
to  all.”  He  must  plunge  afresh  into  that  miry  pit 
which  at  last  is  sure  to  swallow  him  up  He 
plunges  anew  and  the  Jail  awaits  him ;  again ; 
deeper  yet ;  the  Gallows  alone  can  swing  him  clear 
from  that  pestilent  ditch.  But  he  is  a  man  and  a 
brother,  our  companion  in  weakness.  With  his 
education,  exposure,  temptation,  outward  and  from 
within  —  how  much  better  would  the  best  of  you 
become  ? 

No  better  result  is  to  be  looked  for  from  such  a 
course.  Of  the  1,592  persons  in  the  State’s  Prison 
of  New-York  400  have  been  there  more  than  once. 
In  five  years, from  1841  to  1847,  there  were  punished 
in  the  House  of  Correction  in  this  city  5,748  per¬ 
sons  ;  of  these  3,146  received  such  a  sentence 
oftener  than  once.  Yes,  in  five  years  313  were  sent 
thither  each  ten  times  or  more !  How  many  found 
a  place  in  other  Jails  I  know  not. 

What  if  Fathers  treated  dull  or  vicious  boys  in 
this  manner  at  home  —  making  them  infamous  for 
the  first  offence,  or  the  first  d illness,  and  then  re¬ 
fusing  to  receive  them  back  again  ?  What  if  the 
Father  sent  out  his  son  with  bad  boys  and  when 
he  erred  and  fell  said :  “  You  did  mischief  with  bad 
boys  once.  I  know  they  enticed  you.  I  knew  you 
were  feeble  and  could  not  resist  their  seductions. 
But  I  shall  punish  you.  Do  as  well  as  you  please 
I  will  not  forgive  you.  If  you  err  again  I  will 
punish  you  afresh.  If  you  do  never  so  well  you 
shall  be  infamous  for  ever.”  What  if  a  Public 

3 


34 


Teacher  never  took  back  to  college  a  boy  who  once 

had  broke  the  academic  law  —  but  made  him  infa- 

% 

mous  for  ever  !  What  if  the  Physicians  had  kept 
a  patient  the  requisite  time  in  the  Hospital  and  dis¬ 
charged  him  as  wholly  cured,  but  bid  men  beware 
of  him  and  shun  him  for  ever  ?  That  is  just  what 
we  are  doing  with  this  class  of  criminals ;  not 
intentionally,  not  consciously  —  but  doing  none 
the  less ! 

Let  us  look  more  carefully,  though  I  have 
already  touched  on  this  subject,  a  moment  at  the 
proximate  causes  of  crime  in  this  class  of  men. 
The  first  cause  is  obvious  —  Poverty.  Most  of  the 
criminals  are  from  the  lowest  ranks  of  society.  If 
you  distribute  men  into  three  classes — the  Abound¬ 
ing,  the  Thriving,  the  Perishing,  you  will  find  the 
inmates  of  your  Prisons  come  almost  wholly  from 
the  latter  class.  The  Perishing  fill  the  sink  of 
Society,  and  the  Dangerous  the  sink  of  the  Per¬ 
ishing  —  for  in  that  “  lowest  deep  there  is  a  lower 
depth.”  Of  3,188  persons  confined  in  the  House 
of  Correction  in  this  city  1,657  were  foreigners  ;  of 
the  550  sent  from  this  city  in  five  years  to  the 
State’s  Prison  185  were  foreigners.  Of  547  females 
in  the  Prison  on  Blackwell’s  Island  at  one  time  — 
519  were  committed  for  “vagrancy;”  women  with 
no  capital  but  their  person,  with  no  friend,  no  shel¬ 
ter.  Examine  minutely  you  shall  find  that  more 
than  nine  tenths  of  all  criminals  come  from  the 
Perishing  Class  of  men.  There  all  cultivation  — 
intellectual,  moral,  religious  —  is  at  the  lowest  ebb. 
They  are  a  class  of  Barbarians  —  yes,  of  Savages, 
living  in  the  midst  of  civilization  but  not  of  it. 
The  fact  —  that  most  criminals  come  from  this 


35 


class  shows  that  the  causes  of  the  crime  lie  out 
of  them  more  than  in  them ;  that  they  are  Victims 
of  Society,  not  Foes.  The  effect  of  property  in 
elevating  and  moralizing  a  class  of  men  is  seldom 
appreciated.  Historically  the  animal  man  comes 
before  the  spiritual.  Animal  wants  are  imperious  ; 
they  must  be  supplied.  The  lower  you  go  in  the 
social  scale  the  more  is  man  subordinated  to  his 
animal  appetites  and  demonized  by  them.  Nature 
aims  to  preserve  the  individual  and  repeat  the  spe¬ 
cies —  so  all  passions  relative  to  these  two  designs 
are  preeminently  powerful.  If  a  man  is  born  into 
the  intense  life  of  an  American  city  and  grows 
up  having  no  contact  with  the  loftier  culture  which 
naturally  belongs  to  that  intense  life,  why  the  man 
becomes  mainly  an  animal,  —  all  the  more  violent 
for  the  atmosphere  he  breathes  in.  What  shall 
restrain  him?  He  has  not  the  normal  check  of 
Reason,  Conscience,  Religion,  these  sleep  in  the 
man ;  —  nor  the  artificial  and  conventional  check 
of  Honor,  of  Manners.  The  Public  Opinion  which 
he  bows  to  favors  obscenity,  drunkenness,  and  vio¬ 
lence.  He  is  doubly  a  savage.  His  wants  cannot 
be  legally  satisfied.  He  breaks  the  law,  the  lower 
law  which  covers  property,  then  goes  on  to  higher 
crimes. 

The  next  cause  is  the  result  of  the  first  —  Edu¬ 
cation  is  neglected,  intellectual,  moral,  and  relig- 
ious.  Now  and  then  a  boy  in  whom  the  soul  of 
genius  is  covered  with  the  beggar’s  rags  struggles 
through  the  terrible  environment  of  modern  poverty 
to  die,  the'  Hero  of  Misery,  in  the  attempt  at 
education  !  His  expiring  light  only  makes  visible 
the  darkness  out  of  which  it  shone.  Boys  born 


/ 


36 

into  this  condition  find  at  home  nothing  to  aid 
them,  nothing  to  encourage  a  love  of  excellence,  a 
taste  for  even  the  rudiments  of  learning  —  what  is 
unavoidably  the  lot  of  such  ?  The  Land  has  been 
the  Schoolmaster  of  the  Human  Race  —  but  the 
Perishing  Class  scarce  sees  its  face.  Poverty  brings 
privations,  misery,  and  that  a  deranged  state  of  the 
system ;  then  unnatural  appetites  goad  and  burn 
the  man.  The  Destruction  of  the  Poor  is  their  Pov¬ 
erty.  They  see  wealth  about  them  but  have  none  ; 
so  none  of  what  it  brings ;  neither  the  cleanliness, 
nor  health,  nor  self-respect,  nor  cultivation  of  Mind, 
and  Heart,  and  Soul.  I  am  told  that  no  Quaker 
has  ever  been  confined  in  any  Jail  in  New  Eng¬ 
land  for  any  real  crime.  Are  the  Quakers  better 
born  than  other  men?  Nay,  but  they  are  looked 
after  in  childhood.  Who  ever  saw  a  Quaker  in  an 
almshouse?  Not  a  fiftieth  part  of  the  people  of 
New  York  are  negroes,  yet  more  than  a  sixth  part 
of  all  the  criminals  in  her  four  State’s  Prisons  are 
men  of  color.  These  facts  show  plainly  the  causes 
of  crime. 

It  is  almost  impossible  to  exaggerate  the  tempta¬ 
tions  of  the  Perishing  Class  in  our  great  cities.  In 
Boston  at  this  moment  there  are  more  than  400  boys 
employed  about  the  various  bowling-alleys  of  the 
city,  exposed  to  the  intemperance,  the  coarseness, 
the  general  corruption  of  the  men  who  mainly  fre¬ 
quent  those  places.  What  will  be  their  fate?  Shall 
I  speak  of  their  sisters;  of  the  education  they  are 
receiving ;  the  end  that  awaits  them  ? 

Poverty  brings  misery  with  its  family  of  vices. 
A  third  cause  of  crime  comes  with  the  rest  —  In¬ 
temperance,  the  destroying  angel  that  lays  waste 


37 


the  household  of  the  Poor.  In  our  country,  misery 
in  a  healthy  man  is  almost  proof  of  vice,  but  the 
vice  may  belong  to  one  alone,  and  the  misery  it 
brings  be  shared  by  the  whole  family.  A  large 
proportion  of  the  Perishing  Class  are  intemperate, 
and  a  great  majority  of  all  our  criminals. 

Now  our  present  method  is  wholly  inadequate  to 
reform  men  exposed  to  such  circumstances.  You 
may  punish  the  man,  but  it  does  no  good.  You 
can  seldom  frighten  men  out  of  a  fever.  Can  you 
frighten  them  from  crime  when  they  know  little  of 
the  internal  distinction  between  Right  and  Wrong  ; 
when  all  the  circumstances  about  them  impel  to 
crime  ?  Can  you  frighten  a  starving  girl  into  chas¬ 
tity  ?  You  cannot  keep  men  from  lewdness,  theft, 
and  violence  when  they  have  no  self-respect,  no 
culture,  no  development  of  Mind,  Heart,  and  Soul. 
The  Jail  will  not  take  the  place  of  the  Church,  of 
the  School-house,  of  Home.  It  will  not  remove 
the  causes  which  are  making  new  criminals.  It 
does  not  reform  the  old  ones.  Shall  we  shut  men 
in  a  Jail  —  and  when  there  treat  them  with  all 
manner  of  violence,  crush  out  the  little  self-respect 
yet  left,  give  them  a  degrading  dress,  and  send  them 
into  the  world  cursed  with  an  infamous  name, 
and  all  that  because  they  were  born  in  the  low 
places  of  Society  and  caught  the  stain  thereof? 
The  Jail  does  not  alter  the  circumstances  which 
occasioned  the  crime,  and  till  these  causes  are  re¬ 
moved  a  fresh  crop  will  spring  out  of  the  festering 
soil.  Some  men  teach  Dogs  and  Horses  things 
unnatural  to  these  animals ;  they  use  violence  and 
blows  as  their  instrument  of  instruction.  But  to 
teach  man  what  is  conformable  to  his  nature 
something  more  is  required. 


38 


To  return  to  the  other  class,  who  are  born  crimi¬ 
nals.  Bare  confinement  in  the  Prison  alters  no 
man’s  constitutional  tendencies;  it  can  no  more 
correct  moral  or  mental  weakness  or  obliquity  than 
it  can  correct  a  deficiency  of  the  organs  of  sensa¬ 
tion.  You  all  know  the  former  treatment  of  men 
born  with  defective  or  deranged  intellectual  facul¬ 
ties  —  of  Madmen  and  Fools.  We  still  pursue  the 
same  course  towards  men  born  with  defective  or 
deranged  moral  faculties,  Idiots  and  Madmen  of  a 
more  melancholy  class,  and  with  a  like  result. 

I  know  how  easv  it  is  to  find  fault  and  how 
difficult  to  propose  a  better  way;  how  easy  to 
misunderstand  all  that  I  have  said,  how  easy  to 
misrepresent  it  all.  But  it  seems  to  me  that  hitherto 
we  have  set  out  wrong  in  this  undertaking ;  have 
gone  on  wrong,  and  by  the  present  means  can 
never  remove  the  causes  of  crime  nor  much  im¬ 
prove  the  criminals  as  a  class.  Let  me  modestly 
set  down  my  thoughts  on  this  subject,  in  hopes 
that  other  men,  wiser  and  more  practical,  will  find 
out  a  way  yet  better  still.  A  Jail  as  a  mere  house 
of  punishment  for  offenders  ought  to  have  no  place 
in  an  enlightened  people.  It  ought  to  be  a  moral 
Hospital  where  the  offender  is  kept  till  he  is  cured. 
That  his  crime  is  great  or  little  is  comparatively  of 
but  small  concern.  It  is  wrong  to  detain  a  man 
against  his  will  after  he  is  cured ;  a  wrong  to  send 
him  out  before  he  is  cured,  for  he  will  rob  and  cor¬ 
rupt  Society  and  at  last  miserably  perish.  We 
shall  find  curable  cases  and  incurable. 

I  would  treat  the  small  class  of  born-criminals, 
the  Foes  of  Society,  as  maniacs.  I  would  not 
kill  them  more  than  madmen ;  I  would  not  inflict 


i 


39 


needless  pain  on  them.  I  would  not  try  to  shame, 
to  whip,  or  to  starve  into  virtue  men  morally  in¬ 
sane.  I  would  not  torture  a  man  because  born 
with  a  defective  organization.  Since  he  could  not 
live  amongst  men,  I  would  shut  him  out  from 
Society ;  would  make  him  work  for  his  own  good 
and  the  good  of  Society.  The  thought  of  punish¬ 
ment  for  its  own  sake,  or  as  a  compensation  for  the 
evil  which  a  man  has  done,  I  would  not  harbor  for 
a  moment.  If  a  man  has  done  me  a  wrong,  ca¬ 
lumniated,  insulted,  abused  me  with  all  his  power, 
it  renders  the  matter  no  better  that  I  turn  round 
and  make  him  smart  for  it.  If  he  has  burned  my 
house  over  my  head  and  I  kill  him  in  return,  it 
does  not  rebuild  my  house.  I  cannot  leave  him 
at  large  to  burn  other  men’s  houses.  He  must  be 
restrained.  But  if  I  cure  the  man  perhaps  he  will 
rebuild  it  —  at  any  rate  will  be  of  some  service  to 
the  world,  and  others  gain  much  while  I  lose 
nothing. 

When  the  Victims  of  Society  violated  its  laws, 
I  would  not  torture  a  man  for  his  misfortune,  be¬ 
cause  his  father  was  poor,  his  mother  a  brute  ;  be¬ 
cause  his  education  was  neglected.  I  would  shut 
him  out  from  Society  for  a  time.  I  would  make 
him  work  for  his  own  good  and  the  good  of  others. 
The  evil  he  had  caught  from  the  world  I  would 
overcome  by  the  good  that  I  would  present  to  him. 
I  would  not  clothe  him  with  an  infamous  dress, 
crowd  him  with  other  men  whom  Society  had  made 
infamous,  leaving  them  to  ferment  and  rot  together. 
I  would  not  set  him  up  as  a  show  to  the  public,  for 
his  enemy,  or  his  rival,  or  some  miserable  fop  to 
come  and  stare  at  with  merciless  and  tormenting 


40 


eye.  I  would  not  load  him  with  chains,  nor  tear  his 
flesh  with  a  whip.  I  would  not  set  soldiers  with 
loaded  gun  to  keep  watch  over  him,  insulting  their 
brother  by  mocking  and  threats.  I  would  treat  the 
man  with  firmness,  but  with  justice,  with  pity, 
with  love.  I  would  teach  the  man ;  what  his  fam¬ 
ily  could  not  do  for  him  —  what  Society  and  the 
Church  had  failed  of,  the  Jail  should  do,  for  the  Jail 
should  be  a  manual  labor  school,  not  a  dungeon  of 
torture.  I  would  take  the  most  gifted,  the  most 
cultivated,  the  wisest  and  most  benevolent,  yes,  the 
most  Christian  man  in  the  State  and  set  him  to 
train  up  these  poor  savages  of  civilization.  The 
best  man  is  the  natural  physician  of  the  wicked.  A 
violent  man,  angry,  cruel,  remorseless,  should  never 
enter  the  Jail  except  as  a  criminal.  You  have 
already  taken  one  of  the  greatest,  wisest,  and  best 

men  of  this  commonwealth  and  set  him  to  watch 

\  ' 

over  the  Public  Education  of  the  People.  True  you 
give  him  little  money,  and  no  honor ;  he  brings  the 
honor  to  you,  not  asking  but  giving  that.  You 
begin  to  see  the  result  of  setting  such  a  man  to  such 
a  work,  though  unhonored  and  ill-paid.  Soon 
you  will  see  it  more  plainly  in  the  increase  of  tem¬ 
perance,  industry,  thrift ;  of  good  morals  and  sound 
religion !  I  would  set  such  a  man,  if  I  could  find 
such  another,  to  look  after  the  Dangerous  Class¬ 
es  of  Society.  I  would  pay  him  for  it ;  honor  him 
for  it.  I  would  have  a  Board  of  Public  Morals 
to  look  after  this  matter  of  crime,  a  Secretary  of 
Public  Morals,  a  Christian  Censor,  whose  business 
it  should  be  to  attend  to  this  class,  to  look  after  the 
Jails  and  make  them  houses  of  refuge,  of  instruc¬ 
tion,  which  should  do  for  the  Perishing  Class  what 


41 


the  School-house  and  the  Church  do  for  others.  I 
would  send  missionaries  amongst  the  most  expos¬ 
ed  portions  of  Mankind  as  well  as  amongst  the 
savages  of  New  Holland.  I  would  send  wise  men, 
good  men.  There  are  already  many  such  engaged 
in  this  work.  I  would  strengthen  their  hands.  I 
would  make  crime  infamous.  If  there  are  men 
whose  crime  is  to  be  traced  not  to  a  defective  or¬ 
ganization  of  body,  not  to  the  influence  of  circum¬ 
stances,  but  only  to  voluntary  and  self-conscious 
wickedness.  —  I  would  make  these  men  infamous. 
It  should  be  impossible  for  such  a  man,  a  volun¬ 
tary  Foe  of  Mankind,  to  live  in  Society.  I  would 
have  the  Jail  such  a  place  that  the  friends  of  a 
criminal  of  either  class  should  take  him  as  now 
they  take  a  lunatic  or  a  sick  man,  and  bring  him 
to  the  Court  that  he  might  be  healed  if  curable,  or 
if  not  might  be  kept  from  harm  and  hid  away  out 
of  sight.  Crime  and  Sin  should  be  infamous,  not 
its  correction,  least  of  all  its  cure.  I  would  not 
loathe  and  abhor  a  man  who  had  been  corrected 
and  reformed  by  the  Jail  more  than  a  boy  who  had 
been  reformed  by  his  teacher,  or  a  man  cured  of 
lunacy.  I  would  have  Society  a  Father  who  goes 
out  to  meet  the  Prodigal  while  yet  a  great  way  off ; 
yes,  went  and  brought  him  away  from  his  riotous 
living,  washed  him,  clothed  him,  and  restored  him 
to  a  right  mind.  There  is  a  prosecuting  attorney 
for  the  State ;  I  would  have  also  a  defending  at¬ 
torney  for  the  accused,  that  justice  might  be  done 
allround.  Is  the  State  only  a  Step-mother?  Then 
is  she  not  a  Christian  commonwealth  but  a  barba¬ 
rous  despotism,  fitly  represented  by  that  uplifted 
sword  on  her  public  seal,  and  that  motto  of  barba- 


42 


rous  and  bloody  Latin.  I  would  have  the  State 
aid  men  and  direct  them  after  they  have  been  dis¬ 
charged  from  the  Jail,  not  leave  them  to  perish ; 
not  force  them  to  perish.  Society  is  the  natural 
guardian  of  the  weak. 

I  cannot  think  the  method  here  suggested  would 
be  so  costly  as  the  present.  It  seems  to  me  that 
institutions  of  this  character  might  be  made  not 
only  to  support  themselves,  but  be  so  managed  as 
to  leave  a  balance  of  income  considerably  beyond 
the  expense.  This  might  be  made  use  of  for  the 
advantage  of  the  criminal  when  he  returned  to 
Society ;  or  with  it  he  might  help  make  restitution 
of  what  he  had  once  stolen.  Besides  being  less 
costly,  it  would  cure  the  offender  and  send  back 
valuable  men  into  Society. 

It  seems  to  me  that  our  whole  criminal  legisla¬ 
tion  is  based  on  a  false  principle  —  Force  and  not 
Love ;  that  it  is  eminently  well  adapted  to  revenge, 
not  at  all  to  correct,  to  teach,  to  cure.  The  whole 
apparatus  for  the  punishment  of  offenders,  from 
the  Gallows  down  to  the  House  of  Correction, 
seems  to  me  wrong ;  wholly  wrong,  unchristian, 
and  even  inhuman.  We  teach  crime  while  we 
punish  it.  Is  it  consistent  for  the  State  to  take 
vengeance  when  I  may  not?  Is  it  better  for  the 
State  to  kill  a  man  in  cold  blood  than  for  me  to 
kill  my  Brother  when  in  a  rage  ?  I  cannot  help 
thinking  that  the  Gallows,  and  even  the  Jail  as  now 
conducted  are  practical  teachers  of  violence  and 
wrong !  I  cannot  think  it  will  always  be  so.  Hith¬ 
erto  we  have  looked  on  criminals  as  voluntary  ene¬ 
mies  of  Mankind.  We  have  treated  them  as  wild 
beasts,  not  as  dull  or  loitering  boys.  We  have 


43 


sought  to  destroy  by  death,  to  disable  by  mutila¬ 
tion  or  imprisonment,  to  terrify  and  subdue  —  not 
to  convince,  to  reform,  encourage,  and  bless. 

The  history  of  the  past  is  full  of  prophecy  for  the 
future.  Not  many  years  ago  we  shut  up  our 
lunatics  in  jails,  in  dungeons,  in  cages;  we  chain¬ 
ed  the  maniac  with  iron ;  we  gave  him  a  bottle  of 
water  and  a  sack  of  straw ;  we  left  him  in  filth,  in 
cold  and  nakedness.  We  set  strong  and  brutal 
men  to  watch  him.  When  he  cried,  when  he 
gnashed  his  teeth  and  tore  his  hair  we  beat  him  all 
the  more !  They  do  so  yet  in  some  places,  for  they 
think  a  madman  is  not  a  Brother  but  a  Devil. 
What  was  the  result  ?  Madness  was  found  incur¬ 
able.  Now  Lunacy  is  a  disease,  to  be  prescribed 
for  as  Fever  or  Rheumatism;  when  we  find  an 
incurable  case  we  do  not  kill  the  man,  nor  chain 
him,  nor  count  him  a  Devil.  Yet  Lunacy  is  not 
curable  by  Force,  by  Jails,  Dungeons,  and  Cages ; 
only  by  the  medicine  of  wise  men  and  good  men. 
What  if  Christ  had  met  one  Demoniac  with  a 
whip  and  another  with  chains ! 

You  know  how  we  once  treated  criminals !  with 
what  scourgings  and  mutilations,  what  brandings, 
what  tortures  with  fire  and  redhot  iron !  Death 
was  not  punishment  enough,  it  must  be  protract¬ 
ed  amid  the  most  cruel  torments  that  cpiivering 
flesh  could  bear.  The  multitude  looked  on  and 
learned  a  lesson  of  deadly  wickedness.  A  Judicial 
murder  was  a  Holiday  !  It  is  but  little  more  than 
two  hundred  years  since  a  man  was  put  to  death 
in  the  most  enlightened  country  of  Europe  for  eat¬ 
ing  meat  on  Friday !  not  two  hundred  since  men 
and  women  were  hanged  in  Massachusetts  for  a 


44 


crime  now  reckoned  impossible  !  It  is  not  a  hun¬ 
dred  years  since  two  negro  slaves  were  judicially 
burned  alive  in  this  very  city  !  These  facts  make 
us  shudder  but  hope  also.  In  a  hundred  years 
from  this  day  will  not  men  look  on  our  Gallows, 
Jails,  and  penal  law  as  we  look  on  the  Racks,  the 
Torture-chambers  of  the  middle  ages  —  and  the 
bloody  code  of  remorseless  Inquisitors  ? 

We  need  only  to  turn  our  attention  to  this  sub¬ 
ject  to  find  a  better  way.  We  shall  soon  see  that 
punishment  as  such  is  an  evil  to  the  criminal,  and 
so  swells  the  sum  of  suffering  with  which  Society 
runs  over;  that  it  is  an  evil  also  to  the  community 
at  large  by  abstracting  valuable  force  from  profita¬ 
ble  work,  and  so  a  loss.  *  We  shall  one  day 
remember  that  the  offender  is  a  man,  and  so  his 
good  also  is  to  be  consulted.  He  may  be  a  bad 
man,  voluntarily  bad  if  you  will.  Still  we  are  to 
be  economical  even  of  his  suffering  —  for  the  least 
possible  punishment  is  the  best.  Already  a  good 
many  men  think  that  error  is  better  refuted  by 


*  The  period  of  confinement  in  our  States’  Prisons  differs  a  good 
deal  in  the  various  States,  as  will  appear  from  the  following  Table. 


Whole  No.  in  prison. 

Average  sentence. 

In  Conn. 

189, 

March  31, 

1841, 

7 

yrs. 

3  mos. 

Va. 

181, 

Sept. 

30, 

1839, 

6 

it 

10 

u 

Mass. 

322, 

Sept. 

30, 

1840, 

5 

ll 

9 

ll 

La. 

68, 

Sept. 

30, 

1839, 

5 

Cl 

1 

It 

N.  J. 

152, 

Sept. 

30, 

1840, 

4 

Cl 

7 

ll 

Ky. 

162, 

Sept. 

30, 

1839, 

4 

u 

D.  C. 

79, 

Nov. 

30, 

1840, 

3 

ll 

8 

ll 

Md. 

104, 

3 

Cl 

Phila. 

129, 

Sept. 

30, 

1840, 

2 

a 

5 

Cl 

The  difference  between  the  average  term  of  punishment  in  Con¬ 
necticut  and  Philadelphia  is  300  per  cent. !  If  the  same  result  is 
effected  by  each,  there  has  then  been  a  great  amount  of  gratuitous 
suffering  in  one  case  ! 


45 


Truth  than  by  Faggots  and  Axes.  How  long  will 
it  be  before  we  apply  Good  Sense  and  Christianity 
to  the  prevention  of  crime  ?  One  day  we  must  see 
that  a  Jail  as  it  is  now  conducted  is  no  more  likely 
to  cure  a  crime  than  a  lunacy  or  a  fever !  Hitherto 
we  have  not  seen  the  application  of  the  great  doc¬ 
trines  of  Christianity  —  not  felt  that  all  men  are 
brothers.  So  our  remedies  for  social  evils  have 
been  bad  almost  as  the  disease ;  remedies  which 
remedied  nothing,  but  hid  the  patient  out  of  sight. 
All  great  criminals  have  been  thought  incurable  — 
and  then  killed.  What  if  the  Doctors  found  a 
patient  sick  of  a  disease  which  he  had  foolishly  or 
wickedly  brought  upon  himself — and  then,  by  the 
advice  of  twelve  other  Doctors,  professionally  killed 
him  for  justice  or  example’s  sake  ?  They  would 
do  what  all  the  States  in  Christendom  have  done 
these  thousand  years.  I  cannot  see  why  the  legis¬ 
lature  has  not  as  good  right  to  authorize  the  medi¬ 
cal  college  thus  to  kill  men,  as  to  authorize  the 
present  forms  of  destroying  life ! 

We  do  not  look  the  facts  of  crime  fairly  in  the 
face.  We  do  not  see  what  Heathens  we  are. 
Why,  there  is  not  a  Christian  nation  in  the  world 
that  has  not  a  Secretary  of  War,  Armies,  Soldiers, 
and  the  terrible  apparatus  of  destruction.  But 
there  is  not  one  that  has  a  Secretary  of  Peace,  not 
one  that  takes  half  the  pains  to  improve  its  own 
criminals  which  it  takes  to  build  forts  and  fleets ! 
Yet  it  seems*  to  me  that  a  Christian  State  itself 
should  be  a  great  Peace  Society  —  a  Society  for 
mutual  advancement  in  the  qualities  of  a  man ! 

Do  we  not  see  that  by  our  present  course  we  are 
teaching  men  violence,  fraud,  deceit,  and  murder  ? 


46 


What  is  the  educational  effect  of  our  present  polit¬ 
ical  conduct  —  of  our  invasions,  our  battles,  our 
victories;  of  the  speeches  of  “our  great  men5'? 
You  all  know  that  this  teaches  the  Poor,  the  Low, 
and  the  Weak  that  murder  and  robbery  are  good 
things  when  done  on  a  large  scale  ;  that  they  give 
wealth,  fame,  power,  and  honors.  The  ignorant 
man,  ill-born  and  ill-bred,  asks :  “  Why  not  when 
done  on  a  small  scale ;  why  not  good  for  me  ?  ”  If 
it  is  right  in  the  President  of  the  United  States  to 
rob  and  murder,  why  not  for  the  President  of  the 
United  States  Bank  ?  Do  famous  men  say,  “  Our 
country  however  bounded”?  then  why  shall  not 
the  poor  man,  hungry  and  cold,  say  —  “  My  purse 
however  bounded,”  and  seize  on  all  he  can  get? 
Give  one  a  seat  in  Congress  if  you  will  and  the 
other  a  noose  of  hemp,  there  is  a  God  before  whom 
seats  in  Congress  and  hempen  halters  are  of  equal 
value,  but  who  does  justice  to  great  and  little  ! 

To  reform  the  Dangerous  Classes  of  Society,  to 
advance  those  who  loiter  behind  our  civilization, 
we  need  a  special  work  designed  directly  for  the 
good  of  the  Criminals  and  such  as  stand  on  that 
perilous  ground  which  slopes  towards  crime.  Some 
good,  men  undertook  this  work  long  ago.  They 
found  much  to  do  ;  a  good  deal  to  encourage  them. 
Some  of  them  are  well  known  to  you — are  laboring 
here  in  the  midst  of  us.  They  need  counsel,  en¬ 
couragement,  and  aid.  We  must  not  look  coldly 
on  their  enterprise  nor  on  them.  They  can  tell  far 
better  than  I  what  specific  plans  are  best  for  their 
specific  work.  Already  have  they  accomplished 
much  in  this  noble  enterprise.  The  Society  for 


47 


Aiding  Discharged  Convicts  is  a  prophecy  of  yet 
better  things.  Soon  I  trust  it  will  extend  its  kind 
offices  to  all  the  Prisons,  and  its  work  be  made  the 
affair  of  the  State.  The  plan  now  before  your 
legislature  for  a  “  State  Manual  Labor  School, r 
designed  to  reform  vicious  children,  is  also  full  of 
promise.  The  wise  and  anonymous  charity  which 
so  beautifully  and  in  silence  has  dropped  its  gold 
into  the  chest  for  these  poor  outcasts,  is  itself  its 
hundred-fold  reward.  Institutions  like  that  which 
we  contemplate  have  been  found  successful  in 
England,  Germany,  and  France.  They  actually 
reform  the  Juvenile  delinquent  and  bring  up 
useful  men,  not  hardened  criminals.^  We  are 
beginning  to  attend  to  this  special  work  of  re¬ 
moving  the  causes  of  crime  and  restoring,  at  least 
the  young  offenders. 

However,  the  greater  portion  of  this  work  is  not 
special  and  for  the  criminal,  but  general  and  for 
Society.  To  change  the  treatment  of  criminals  we 
must  change  every  thing  else.  The  Dangerous 
Class  is  the  unavoidable  result  of  our  present  civi¬ 
lization  ;  of  our  present  ideas  of  man  and  social  life. 
To  reform  and  elevate  the  class  of  criminals  we 
must  reform  and  elevate  all  other  classes.  To  do 


*  I  refer  to  the  Prisons  at  Stretton-upon-Dunmore  in  Warwick¬ 
shire,  that  at  Horn  near  Hamburg,  and  the  one  at  Mettray  near  Tours 
in  France.  The  French  penal  code  allows  the  guardian  or  relatives 
of  an  offender  under  age  to  take  him  from  prison  on  giving  bonds  for 
his  good  behavior. — While  these  pages  are  passing  through  the  press 
I  learn  the  happy  effect  which  follows  the  vigorous  execution  of  the 
license  laws  in  this  city.  In  1846,  from  the  10th  of  March  to  the  24th 
of  April  there  were  sent  to  the  House  of  Correction  for  Intemperance 
189  persons.  During  the  same  period  of  the  present  year,  only  84 
have  been  thus  punished  !  v 


48 


» 


that  we  must  educate  and  refine  men.  We  must 
learn  to  treat  all  men  as  Brothers.  This  is  a  great 
work  and  one  of  slow  achievement.  It  cannot  be 
brought  about  by  legislation,  nor  any  mechanical 
contrivance  and  re-organization  alone.  There  is  no 
remedy  for  this  evil  and  its  kindred  but  a  keeping 
of  the  Laws  of  God ;  in  one  word  none  but  Chris¬ 
tianity,  Goodness,  and  Piety  felt  in  the  heart,  ap¬ 
plied  in  all  the  works  of  life,  individually,  socially, 
and  politically.  While  educated  and  abounding 
men  acknowledge  no  rule  of  conduct  but  self-inter¬ 
est,  what  can  you  expect  of  the  Ignorant  and  the 
Perishing?  while  great  men  say  without  rebuke  that 
we  do  not  look  at  “  the  natural  justice  of  a  war  ”  — 
do  you  expect  men  in  the  lowest  places  of  Society, 
ignorant  and  brutish,  pinched  by  want  —  to  look  at 
the  natural  justice  of  theft,  of  murder?  ’T  were  a 
vain  expectation.  We  must  improve  all  classes  to 
improve  one ;  perhaps  the  highest  first.  Different 
men  acting  in  the  most  various  directions,  without 
concert,  often  jealous  one  of  another,  and  all 
partial  in  their  aims  are  helping  forward  this  uni¬ 
versal  result  While  we  are  contending  against 
slavery,  war,  intemperance,  or  party  rage,  while  we 
are  building  up  hospitals,  colleges,  schools,  while  we 
are  contending  for  freedom  of  conscience,  or  teach¬ 
ing  abstractly  the  Love  of  Man  and  Love  of  God 
—  we  are  all  working  for  the  welfare  of  this  neg¬ 
lected  class.  The  Gallows  of  the  Barbarian  and 
the  Gospel  of  Christianity  cannot  exist  together. 
The  times  are  full  of  promise.  Mankind  slowly 
fulfils  what  a  man  of  genius  prophesies.  God 
grants  what  a  good  man  asks,  and  when  it  comes 
it  is  better  than  what  he  prayed  for. 

(o  s  y  c? !  I 


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